A trip down memory lane: The Apple Lisa and Apple IIe turn 30

Join us for a photo tour of the Lisa and Apple IIe, introduced in January 1983.

The original Lisa was introduced at an Apple shareholder meeting on January 19, 1983. It had been in development since the late 1970s, and Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa team just before its launch in 1983. Apple claimed it was an acronym: Local Integrated System Architecture, but the lore is that the machine was really named after Jobs' first daughter. Perched atop the machine is the ProFile 5MB hard drive.

Wikimedia Commons

This is a shot of an original Lisa 1 prototype before its official announcement on January 19, 1983.

The Apple IIe was also introduced at the shareholder meeting on January 19, 1983, alongside the Lisa. It was the third model in the Apple II line but became one of the most successful machines Apple had released yet. Unlike the Lisa, the Apple IIe did not have a graphical "desktop," building instead upon the Apple ][+.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

I mean, the thought of having a computer payment, at least of that magnitude, was just bizarre. It'd be like having a giraffe payment.

A computer payment was not that uncommon when I sold them back in 1983. A complete IIe system often sold for $4000 or so, which was even more money then than now. The current ability to pick up a workable PC for $500, or a Macintosh for $1000 would have seemed preposterous to us back then.

Note that in the twelfth picture, that's a Monitor III perched on top of the Apple II, with the special accessory shelf made for that adaptation. Apple must have had a lot of Monitor III's left over, as the specs for the two were essentially the same.

(Actually, the Monitor III, had an anti-glare surface. NOT a chemical coating; an actual piece of fabric mesh bonded to the glass surface. The Monitor II, on the other hand, had the advantage of a tiltable screen.)

Also, I'm sure every geek worth his or her salt, even the Apple haters, have read Andy Hertzfeld's awesome collection of anecdotes about the development of the Macintosh at folklore.org. One of the greatest stories on there is the one talking about the Apple II mouse card and the crazy hackery needed to make the Apple II display a "modern" (period-modern, at least) GUI and mouse cursor.

We got a "fully decked out" Lisa at ComputerLand shortly before launch. Of course back then computer salespeople were just repurposed car salespeople for the most part (not necessarily cars specifically, but a certain "sales" mentality) and they were baffled but excited over the margins lol. Of course they didn't manage to sell any.

Glad you included the old Profile. That thing was just hilarious. I mean yeah, hard drives on the PC side at the time were full height 5 1/4" but the Profile lol... what was it, 75% power supply? I don't have any recollection of it beyond its size perched atop the Lisa. Was it SCSI? MacOS may have evolved a bit by the time the 128K was released, but otherwise the Lisa was a very accurate preview of the Macintosh... with dual floppies!

A computer payment was not that uncommon when I sold them back in 1983. A complete IIe system often sold for $4000 or so, which was even more money then than now. The current ability to pick up a workable PC for $500, or a Macintosh for $1000 would have seemed preposterous to us back then.

My parents actually bought me the IIe for like $4300 back then and neither of them knew what it was. My mom constantly says now that it was the best thing they bought me as a kid. I learned computers from that thing and thought I was awesome because none of the other kids I knew had one. I taught my mom how to use a PC and while she doesn't like to use my Mac's, she is proficient in Windows.

I mean, the thought of having a computer payment, at least of that magnitude, was just bizarre. It'd be like having a giraffe payment.

A computer payment was not that uncommon when I sold them back in 1983. A complete IIe system often sold for $4000 or so, which was even more money then than now. The current ability to pick up a workable PC for $500, or a Macintosh for $1000 would have seemed preposterous to us back then.

I find old issues of Computer Shopper good as a reminder of what things cost back in the day. It's nice to visit, but considering "collectors" prices, I wouldn't want to go back.

I pulled my 2e down off the shelf sometime in the past year or so to check, and it still runs. I spent something like $7k on it in total. That included $2k just for a pair of 8" floppy drives (including the drives, a case, and a controller card). I did eventually ditch the 8" floppy drives as not having enough nostalgia value to be worth the storage space.

I bought a //e while I was in the US Navy. It was pretty pimped out on the inside, but I never got around to buying a color monitor, just the monochrome/green. I eventually ended up with a 5MB hard disk for it and everything. When I got a Mac SE/30, I gave the Apple to my sister and her husband. Then when they upgraded to an MS-DOS PC, they just threw it away instead of giving it back to me.

Oh, and I did finance it with the computer store. I spent almost as much on the //e as I did on my (used) car.

The Apple IIe was probably the first computer I ever used because of their introduction into the education world in the early 1980s. My teachers let me read the manual to the computer, floppy drives and printer to the point I was the first line of troubleshooting before they called in the people from the district.

In that review, the author has to explain every single thing like a clipboard, mouse cursor, double clicking, pop-up menus, selecting text with a mouse, different fonts and sizes, dragging windows around, scroll bars, a desktop, multitasking, "undo" commands.

In 1983 another commercial dud, the IBM PCjr was also released. By the time the Lisa came out I had already been computing/ learning and programming with the Apple II for 5 years. During that time I subscribed to several computer magazines and read other computer literature and so was relatively "up with the times". With age I sometimes am forced to realize that some of my personal views are skewed in regards to what the majority might be consider normal.Here are some observations or opinions - for whatever their worth.

1) Steve Wozniak created the Apple II alone. Looking over Woz's shoulder, Steve Jobs was the enterprising opportunist that elevated a garage hoby-shop into the Apple corporation.

2) The Apple II was viable in the marketplace and used by millions for a period of about 15 years, while the Lisa was an instant flop. The Lisa was the wrong computer. Yes we drooled over the prospect of having a Lisa and toying with the power of Motorola's 68000 processor, but in light of Job's prices that was to remain only a dream.

3) To the technically inquisitive user, the real power behind the success of the Apple II family was in the openness of the platform. The computer's workings were an open book. Startup enterprises were actually encouraged to develop accessories and hardware for the machine. That changed with the Lisa. While the Lisa was a more complicated platform than the Apple II, its inner workings were also more mysterious, thanks to greed. Later with the Macintosh, developers could purchase (with a hefty price) publications explaining the preferred use of (and calls to) routines already burned into ROM. By clamping down on proprietary information, Apple was able to control its after-market.

4) The Apple II came with 4 one bit “annunciators”. Each annunciator output could be used as an input to some other electronic device or connected to circuits controlling whatever ( switches, speakers, lamps, relays, etc.) A simple call to a soft switch would turn an annunciator on (+5v), another soft switch turned it off ( 0 volts). A case of unused potential that few hobbyist took advantage of.

5) The first IBM PC motherboards are incredibly similar in layout to the Apple II's motherboard. The main improvement being the manner in which graphics were handled. The success of the IBM PC can also be traced back to its "openness". To IBM's chagrin though, clones soon took over the market.

6) If not for Jobs the Apple II might have developed into the market dominant, ubiquitous platform that the IBM platform is today. Instead we got the Lisa, and then the Macintosh. He was right in that the majority of users need a high level OS and do not need to ponder why their machines work.

6) I understood my old Apple II but I would not swap it for the one I have now.

But like Carl Sagan said: "We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces".

Fond memories of learning apple basic at school on IIe and //c's.Unfortunately didn't properly touch programming again until did my engineering degree 15 years later

_fluffy wrote:

Avaviel wrote:

Now one has to go to iFixit for the tinker slot guides.

I'm not sure RAM slots count as "tinkering."

Agree. Hardware tinkering is making your own hardware addons (usb/serial) or using miros or raspberry pi addons to control things - though today it is easier than ever before .

We're spoilt by chips like ftdi or other usb to serial chips and platforms like arduino, raspberry pi , papillo/zpuino (arduino clone for fpgas) to make addons for your pc. Or use the addons like redpark for ios or for android and develop your own addons/control via phones/tablets.

With a redpark serial cable its very easy to control an arduino from your ipad and just as easy from an android tablet. If you know c can do the same using any microcontroller (with uarts).

Same for software - free compilers, a multitude of languages give almost unlimited options for software tinkering.

Speaking of computer dealers, there was quite a bit of "dealer markup" in those days, especially if you were shopping for a computer in a stereo store.

scotts13 wrote:

Note that in the twelfth picture, that's a Monitor III perched on top of the Apple II, with the special accessory shelf made for that adaptation. Apple must have had a lot of Monitor III's left over, as the specs for the two were essentially the same.

I remember seeing a lot of II+ & Monitor III setups in schools. They probably weren't "leftovers", I think it was the only monitor Apple sold at the time.

I love how the on-screen typeface used for the Lisa's GUI screams "TRAPPER KEEPER". I think it's those rakish Vs and Ws.

The Lisa was not originally meant to have the Apple GUI, so the GUI was designed and implemented after the hardware was basically final. This had two consequences: 1) The graphics hardware didn't provide square pixels, making it more difficult than should have been necessary to implement a good-looking GUI. 2) The computer was underpowered, having only a 5Mhz 68k MPU.

On the other hand, the Lisa was far ahead of its time for a microcomputer in some respects. It offered a full hierarchical file system on mass storage (5Mb). It had a preemptively multitasking operating system. It had a document-centric operating model. If you wanted to write a document, you didn't open the word processor application, you "tore off" a new sheet from your "writing pad" and got to work. The OS didn't really have the concept of running applications, but rather the concept of open documents. You can see the pads in the second GUI screen shot. Apple later planned to implement this idea on the Mac with Opendoc, but Steve Jobs killed Opendoc when he returned to Apple in 1997.

Speaking of computer dealers, there was quite a bit of "dealer markup" in those days, especially if you were shopping for a computer in a stereo store.

scotts13 wrote:

Note that in the twelfth picture, that's a Monitor III perched on top of the Apple II, with the special accessory shelf made for that adaptation. Apple must have had a lot of Monitor III's left over, as the specs for the two were essentially the same.

I remember seeing a lot of II+ & Monitor III setups in schools. They probably weren't "leftovers", I think it was the only monitor Apple sold at the time.

I think you're right. Before the Monitor III, you just got a third-party monitor or used your TV set.I always liked the Monitor III. It had great contrast and no reflections.

Had a Lisa 2 upgraded to a Mac XL, and one that was sold as a Mac XL. The Lisa had a 10MB hard disk that died. We replaced it with 2 of the Profile drives that were 5MB each. First real example of plug and play.

Plug a card into the back, plug the drives into the card, and the Lisa would fire up (10 minutes after you turned on the drives, they needed some time to spin up), and ask which port you wanted to boot off, and away you went.

2 cards at the front are 512K each, behind that is the CPU board with the 68000 highlighted, and behind that was the IO board. On the right hand end is the 2 "zero force insertion" slots, put the card into the top, then turn the key to lock the connectors in place.

The Lisa was not originally meant to have the Apple GUI, so the GUI was designed and implemented after the hardware was basically final. This had two consequences: 1) The graphics hardware didn't provide square pixels, making it more difficult than should have been necessary to implement a good-looking GUI. 2) The computer was underpowered, having only a 5Mhz 68k MPU.